This is a huge point.
It's one thing if you schedule like Georgia with its 4 non-conference games. They played Notre Dame and the Georgia Tech rivalry game plus App State and Samford. Two P5s, a quality G5 and an FCS is a reasonable schedule. They've played 10 games against P5 competition in the regular season.
Alabama? They played Florida State (which turned out to be very mediocre this year, but I don't hold that against Bama). After that, it's 2 G5 teams at home and an FCS home game. They've only played 9 games against P5 competition.
So let's compare Alabama with its 9 P5 opponents vs Ohio State and USC. I think this is a HUGE point when comparing 1 loss to 2 losses.
Ohio State: Oklahoma plus 2 G5s in its non-conference + 9 Big Ten games. Then a conference championship. They've played 11 real games.
USC: Texas and Notre Dame plus 1 G5 in its non-conference + 9 Pac-12 games. Then a conference championship. They've played 12 real games.
That has to matter for the same reasons that the committee was penalizing Wisconsin for its schedule (3 G5s so they only played 9 real games - same as Alabama). But Wisconsin played a 10th in its conference championship. If we're going to play the Alabama argument, Wisconsin should be the 4th team in since they went 9-1 in real games as opposed to Alabama's 8-1. Wins over Northwestern, Iowa and Michigan are as good as wins over Florida State, LSU and Mississippi State, then Wisconsin was more competitive in its Ohio State loss than Alabama was in its Auburn loss.
I really don't know what Alabama's argument is.